Gloria ~ May 27

 

Memorial Day

In Flander's field

The Poppies grow

Among the crosses

Row by row…

 

Ron and I were in Normandy last year for the annual June 6 D-Day celebration. We were supposed to have been accompanied by a friend and her father,  a 

WW11 veteran paratrooper. He was to have made the trip a year before, but Covid interrupted that plan and he passed soon after. So now it was just his daughter with us to honour his memory.

 

We had an amazing guide who specialises in the history of what happened on June 6, 1944. He took us to the spot where her father was dropped behind the German lines in the middle of the night... before the allies stormed the beaches.

In the town of Angoville-au Plain there is a church nearby that had sheltered  the injured soldiers and a small boy who had lost his family and wandered in needing help. 

 

The blood stains on the wooden pews are still there.

 

On the day of formal celebration, we walked through rows and rows of crosses  in the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. It had been my understanding that there were many Jewish boys under those crosses, as they had falsified their identities in case they were captured by the Germans.

 

But with the advent of advanced DNA, some of those boys have been correctly identified. So now we are seeing the Star of David marking their graves.

 

I wanted to find at least one. 

 

We did...and among many others... a surprising namesake! 

 

Theodore  F  Rosenbaum

2 LT 358 INF 90 DIV

IOWA JULY 12 1944 

 

He was killed 11 days before I was born.

 

It is not within our Jewish tradition to bring flowers to a grave. What we do is leave a stone in remembrance. I added mine to the four stones and two pine cones that were already in place.

 

So now... in Flanders field…there are Stars.